


How Our Hearts Are Worn

by wingedspirit



Series: Winter 2019 Prompts [21]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 31 Days of Ineffables Advent Calendar Challenge (Good Omens), 31 Days of Ineffables Advent Calendar Challenge 2019 (Good Omens), Canon-Typical Angst, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21889258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingedspirit/pseuds/wingedspirit
Summary: A history of gift-giving.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Winter 2019 Prompts [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1560823
Comments: 10
Kudos: 125





	How Our Hearts Are Worn

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [drawlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drawlight)’s [advent calendar prompt list](https://drawlight.tumblr.com/post/188869931294/aziraphale-crowley-for-half-an-hour-youve-been) (day 21, gift).

They don’t give each other gifts. Of course they don’t. Why would they? They’re enemies.

No, when a demon sneaks into an angel’s rooms while he’s out and leaves a small stack of tablets there for him to find — an astronomical treatise, a creation myth, and a poem, plus a smaller tablet inscribed with his sigil, just so the angel can be certain it was him — why, that’s intimidation. He’s letting the angel know that he knows where he lives, and he can get in at any time, so the angel had better watch his back.

And of course, when the angel does the same in return, breaks into where the demon is staying and leaves a tablet inscribed with his own sigil and a jeweled gold bangle right there on his cot — nothing fancy, just a small thing, shaped like a coiled serpent with glinting topaz eyes — that’s just letting the demon know that the intimidation attempt has failed, that he will not be cowed.

Gifts between enemies. What a ridiculous notion.

⁂

They don’t give each other gifts. They’ve had, what, three proper conversations in the last half-century? Not that either of them is counting. The fact of the matter is, they’re not even acquaintances, not really. And gifts are for friends.

So when the angel adds a little something to the notes he sends the demon — a ring, a square of fine silk, a small sketch, a pendant— it’s only a bribe. He’s merely doing his best to shore up this uneasy, unstable truce they seem to have built. Keep the demon relaxed and disinclined to pick a fight.

And when the demon does the same thing — a handful of fruit, a pastry, a pressed flower, a scroll — it’s the same thing. Keeping the angel content, because, at least in his limited experience, a content angel is more likely to smile than to smite.

They’re not gifts. They’re not friends. They can’t be.

⁂

They don’t give each other gifts. It’s not safe. Heaven or Hell might check in at any time, and they’ve already had several close calls. They’re friends, and it’s not safe.

But the angel owns so many books, and has a decent stock of wine, too. Even with an angelic memory, he can’t really be expected to remember all of them. So that unfamiliar bottle of wine, that book he could swear he had never seen — they’re not new. Of course not. He’d simply forgotten he had them.

And the demon, for his part — his place is just a place, not a home. It’s just where he sleeps. He cares not at all for human trappings; the things he surrounds himself with have no meaning, are not chosen with any amount of care. As a matter of fact, he tends to acquire things when he’s so drunk he can’t see or think straight, not that the humans can tell; and when he’s that drunk, he has no memory of it, once he’s sobered up. This astronomy book, that painting, the silver chain he always wears — he doesn’t remember buying them, but it’s no wonder. He must’ve been drunk again.

And if the angel’s bookshop is sometimes so tightly warded that an outside observer couldn’t possibly tell whether he’s inside or not, let alone who else might be there with him, that’s just common sense. There’s a demon in London as well, after all.

And if the angel and the demon occasionally sit side by side on the same park bench or behind each other on the same bus, run into each other at a concert or in a museum, well, it’s just professional courtesy to ignore each other then, isn’t it? Besides, if they stopped doing that and got into a fight, who knows what would happen. There are so many humans around.

It’s not safe.

⁂

Here is a gift, disguised as a leather satchel of books: protection for the things an angel holds most dear, and a demon’s hope that he might, one day, count among their number.

⁂

Here is a gift, disguised as a thermos of holy water: destruction at a demon’s fingertips, and an angel’s hope that they might, one day, be free.

⁂

Here is a gift: an angel and a demon finding their safety in each other.

⁂

Here is a quiet cottage in the South Downs.

Here is a tablet in a long-dead language, a coiled-snake bangle, a ring, a pressed flower. Here are books and paintings and bottles of wine. Here are the scattered fragments, the tracery of two separate lives lived always, always, always together.

Here is peace; here is safety; here is freedom.

Here, at last, is love.

Here are an angel and a demon. As different as it is possible for any two entities to be, and yet as alike, also; polar opposites, yet so close that they may inhabit each other’s skins, and you would not be able to tell which is which unless they allowed you to.

They give each other gifts.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Vienna Teng’s “Shine”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hzy8bKh2vk).
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](https://wingedspirit.tumblr.com/).


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